According to Heinlein, his desire to write Starship Troopers was sparked by the publication of a newspaper advertisement placed by the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy on April 5, 1958 calling for a unilateral suspension of nuclear weapon testing by the United States. In response, Robert and Virginia Heinlein created the small "Patrick Henry League" in an attempt to create support for the U.S. nuclear testing program. Heinlein found himself under attack both from within and outside the science fiction community for his views. Heinlein used the novel to clarify and defend his military and political views at the time.[9]

Some time during 1958 and 1959, Heinlein ceased work on the novel that would become Stranger in a Strange Land and wrote Starship Troopers. It was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in October and November 1959 as a serial called Starship Soldier. Although originally written as a juvenile novel for New York publishing house Scribner, it was rejected,[10] prompting Heinlein to cease writing juvenile fiction for Scribners, to end his association with that publisher completely, and resume writing books with adult themes.[11] The novel was eventually published as teenage fiction by G. P. Putnam's Sons.[12] A senior editor at Putnam's, Peter Israel, purchased the novel and approved revisions that made it more marketable to adults, and dodged the issue of whether it was aimed at children or adults: "Let's let the readers decide who likes it," he said at a sales conference.[13]

Starship Troopers takes place in the midst of an interstellar war between the Terran Federation of Earth and the Arachnids (referred to as "The Bugs") of Klendathu. It is narrated as a series of flashbacks by Juan Rico, and is one of just a few Heinlein novels set out in this fashion.[14] The novel opens with Rico aboard the corvetteRodger Young (named after Medal of Honor recipient Rodger Wilton Young), serving with the platoon known as "Rasczak's Roughnecks" (named after the platoon leader, Lieutenant Rasczak). "Rasczak's Roughnecks" are about to embark on a raid against a colony inhabited by "Skinnies", allies of the Arachnids. We learn that he is a 'cap [capsule] trooper' in the Terran Federation's Mobile Infantry. The raid itself, one of the few instances of actual combat in the novel, is relatively brief: the Roughnecks land on the planet, destroy their targets, and retreat, suffering a single casualty in the process (Dizzy Flores, who dies in the retrieval boat).

The story then flashes back to Rico's graduation from high school, and his decision to sign up for Federal Service over the objections of his father, who disowns him. This is the only chapter that describes Rico's civilian life, and most of it is spent on the monologues of two people: retired Lieutenant Colonel Jean V. Dubois, Rico's school instructor in "History and Moral Philosophy"; and Fleet Sergeant Ho, a disabled recruiter for the armed forces of the Terran Federation.

Some see Dubois as speaking for Heinlein throughout the novel; he delivers what is probably the book's most famous soliloquy on violence: "[It] has settled more issues in history than has any other factor."[15] Fleet Sergeant Ho's monologues examine the nature of military service, and his anti-military tirades seem primarily to be a contrast with Dubois. Later it becomes apparent that his attitude and display of truncated limbs are intended to scare off unmotivated applicants.

Interspersed throughout the book are other flashbacks to Rico's high school History and Moral Philosophy course, which describe how in the Terran Federation of Rico's day, the rights of a full Citizen (to vote and hold public office) must be earned through some form of volunteer Federal service. Those residents who have not exercised their right to perform this Federal Service retain all other rights generally associated with a modern democracy (free speech, assembly, etc.), but they cannot vote or hold public office. This structure arose ad hoc after the collapse of the "20th century Western democracies", brought on by both social failures at home (among which appear to be poor handling of juvenile delinquency) and military defeat by the Chinese Hegemony overseas.[16]

In the next section of the novel, after being denied all of his other preferred Service choices, Rico begins training at Camp Arthur Currie on the Canadian prairie. Five chapters are spent exploring Rico's experience there, including his adjustment to a very different situation, entering the service under the training of the leading instructor, career Ship's Sergeant Charles Zim. Camp Currie is rigorous by design; less than ten percent of the recruits finish basic training. (Rico says they didn't make the training regimen harder than necessary, they made it as hard as possible and on purpose.) The rest either resign, are expelled, or die in training. One of the chapters deals with Ted Hendrick, a fellow recruit and constant complainer who is flogged and expelled for striking a superior officer during a simulated combat exercise; he caught Sgt. Zim by surprise after being struck by the sergeant for failure to remain motionless during a 'freeze' exercise. Notably, Zim does not offer this information to his superior, but Hendrick unwittingly does. Another recruit, a deserter who murdered a baby girl while AWOL, is hanged by his battalion after his arrest by civilian police and return to Camp Currie. Rico himself is flogged for making a brief visual area check during a (simulated) no-visibility, instruments-only drill; despite this punishment and his own earlier doubts about his fitness to serve, Rico eventually graduates and is assigned to a unit in the Fleet.

At some point during Rico's training, the "Bug War" has changed from border incidents to a full-scale war, and Rico finds himself taking part in combat operations. The war "officially" starts with an Arachnid attack that annihilates the city of Buenos Aires (which kills Juan's mother who was visiting there), although prior to the attack there had been many 'incidents' and 'police actions'.[17] Rico briefly describes the Terran Federation's disastrous defeat at the Battle of Klendathu, during which his first unit and ship are destroyed. Following Klendathu, the Terran Federation is reduced to making hit-and-run raids similar to the one described at the beginning of the novel. Rico is posted to Rasczak's Roughnecks. This part of the book focuses on the daily routine of military life, as well as the relationship between officers and non-commissioned officers, personified in this case by Rasczak and Sergeant Jelal.

Eventually, Rico decides to become a career soldier, and one of his fellow troopers claims he is officer material and should consider volunteering for Officer Candidate School. He applies and is accepted. It turns out to be just like boot camp, only "squared and cubed with books added".[18] En route from the Roughnecks to OCS, Sergeant Rico encounters his father, now Corporal Rico, in transit. The death of Juan's mother in the Bug attack on Buenos Aires (along with Juan's earlier enlistment) motivated Rico Sr. to enlist himself—and though the two had been estranged since Juan entered service, father and son reconcile before going their separate ways.

Rico manages to make it through OCS and is commissioned a temporary third lieutenant for his final test, a posting to a combat unit. Under the tutelage of his company commander, Captain Blackstone, and the aid of his platoon sergeant, Zim (who has been reassigned from Camp Arthur Currie), Rico commands a platoon during Operation Royalty, a raid to capture members of the Bugs' 'brain caste' and 'queens'. Although Rico is personally convinced that he badly mismanaged his men, Blackstone decides otherwise and Rico graduates as a second lieutenant.

The final chapter serves as a coda, depicting Rico aboard the Rodger Young as the commander of Rico's Roughnecks (previously Rasczak's Roughnecks), preparing to drop on Klendathu as part of a major invasion, with Sergeant Rico (his father) as senior NCO.

Starship Troopers seems to have been meant as a political essay as well as a novel. Large portions of the book take place in classrooms, with Rico and other characters engaged in debates with their History and Moral Philosophy teacher, who is often thought[19] to be speaking in Heinlein's voice.[19] The overall theme of the book is that social responsibility requires being prepared to make individual sacrifice. Heinlein's Terran Federation is a limited democracy, with aspects of a meritocracy in regard to full citizenship, based on voluntarily assuming a responsibility for the common good. Suffrage can only be earned by those willing to serve their society by at least two years of volunteer Federal Service – "the franchise is today limited to discharged veterans", (ch. XII), instead of, as Heinlein would later note, anyone "...who is 18 years old and has a body temperature near 37 °C"[20] The Federation is required to find a place for anyone who desires to serve, regardless of his skill or aptitude (this also includes service ranging from teaching to dangerous non-military work such as serving as experimental medical test subjects to military service—such as Rico's Mobile Infantry).

There is an explicit contrast to the "democracies of the 20th century", which according to the novel, collapsed because "people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears."[21] Indeed, Colonel Dubois criticizes the famous U.S. Declaration of Independence line concerning "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as unrealistic. No one can stop anyone from pursuing happiness, but the Colonel claims life and liberty exist only if they are deliberately sought and, often, bought painfully by great effort and sacrifice.

The Korean War ended only five years before Heinlein began writing Starship Troopers, and the book makes several direct references to it, such as the claim that "no 'Department of Defense' ever won a war."[22] Heinlein also refers to the American prisoners of war taken in that conflict, including the popular accusations of Communist brainwashing.[23] After the Korean War ended, there were rumors that the Chinese and North Koreans continued to hold a large number of Americans.[24] Rico's History and Moral Philosophy class at Officer Candidate School has a long discussion about whether it is moral to never leave a single man behind, even at the risk of starting a new war. Rico debates whether it was worth it to risk two nations' futures over a single fellow soldier who might not even deserve to live by some standard, but concludes it "doesn't matter whether it's a thousand – or just one, sir. You fight."[25]

Juan Rico begins the novel with no thought of his personal responsibility or of any particular group's responsibility to self or others. This theme is repeatedly obliquely addressed immediately in the novel's opening. "We had all inspected our combat equipment (look, it's your own neck -- see?), the acting platoon sergeant had gone over us carefully after he mustered us, and now Jelly went over us again, his eyes missing nothing." "Now I was going to have a hole in my section and no way to fill it. That's not good; it means a man can run into something sticky, call for help and have nobody to help him." "I've heard tell that there used to be military outfits whose chaplains did not fight alongside the others, but I've never been able to see how that could work. I mean, how can a chaplain bless anything he's not willing to do himself? In any case, in the Mobile Infantry, everybody drops and everybody fights -- chaplain and cook and the Old Man's writer."

The theme is repeated through flashbacks to both High School and Officer Candidate School in a required class called History and Moral Philosophy. Heinlein uses this as exposition to explain the societal and political setting - after a war, a group of veterans in control of the government decided that only those who had volunteered to serve could really be trusted to appreciate the responsibility of governing, and they limited the franchise to service veterans. (The novel explicitly discloses that service need not be military service, but military service is suggested to be the primary kind of service in question, and is the service we see throughout the book.) In this view, everything from the right to vote to the punishments for various crimes are depicted as part of a larger effort to recognize society's needs and improve society, as distinct from self-interest. It is important to note that the service Heinlein envisioned was an all-volunteer service, long before the US military had changed to an all-volunteer model. Other than the rights to vote and hold public office, there is no other restriction between service veterans and civilians - everyone can live where they like, work how they choose, follow the same laws, etc.

In the course of both the "current" plot and flashbacks Rico learns to take responsibility for ever-increasing groups: himself, his comrades, and eventually all of mankind (a shared responsibility, of course) - and accept that as the reason for remaining in the service. Further, Rico is seen to develop from relatively powerless as an unimposing Filipino teenager to a very dangerous fighter. "There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men. We're trying to teach you to be dangerous -- to the enemy. Dangerous even without a knife. Deadly as long as you still have one hand or one foot and are still alive."

In addition to Heinlein's political views, Starship Troopers popularized a number of concepts and innovations in military engineering which have since become broadly present in other science fiction and some of which have been paralleled in real-life research. The novel's most noted innovation is the powered armorexoskeletons used by the Mobile Infantry.[26] These suits were controlled by the wearer's own movements, but powerfully augmented a soldier's strength, speed, weight-carrying capacity (which allowed much heavier personal armament), and jumping ability (including jet and rocket boost assistance), and provided the wearer with improved senses (infrared vision and night vision, radar, and amplified hearing), a completely self-contained personal environment including a drug-dispensing apparatus, sophisticated communications equipment, and tactical map displays. Their powered armor made the Mobile Infantry a hybrid between an infantry unit and an armored one.

Another concept the book pioneered was that of "space-borne infantry". The heavily mechanized units of M.I. troops were attached to interstellar troop transport spacecraft, which then delivered them to planetary target zones, by dropping groups of Mobile Infantrymen onto the planet surface from orbit via individual re-entry capsules (hence the book's slang term "cap troopers" for M.I. troops). The uses for such a force—ranging from smash-and-burn raids, to surgical strikes, conventional infantry warfare, and holding beachheads—and the tactics that might be employed by such soldiers are described extensively within the novel. The tactics, training, and many other aspects of this futuristic elite force are carefully detailed: everything from the function of the armored suits themselves, to the need for multiple variants of powered armor, to the training of personnel in both suit operations and the specialized unit tactics that would be needed, to the operational use of the suits in combat.

While powered armor is Starship Troopers '​ most famous legacy, its influence extends deep into contemporary militaries. Over half a century after its publication, Starship Troopers was on the reading lists of the United States Marine Corps[27][28] and the United States Navy.[29] It is the first science fiction novel to have appeared on the reading lists at three of the five United States military branches. When Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers the United States military was a largely conscripted force, with conscripts serving two-year hitches. Today the U.S. military has incorporated many ideas similar to Heinlein's concept of an all-volunteer, high-tech strike force. In addition, references to the book keep appearing in military culture. In 2002, a marine general described the future of Marine Corps clothing and equipment as needing to emulate the Mobile Infantry.[30] In 2012, an article on the US military buying ballistic face masks specifically referenced the "big steel gorilla[s]" of Starship Troopers.[31]

In his review column for F&SF, Damon Knight selected the novel as one of the 10 best genre books of 1959.[33] In a 2009 retrospective, Jo Walton finds Starship Troopers "military SF done extremely well."[34] "Heinlein was absolutely at his peak when he wrote this in 1959. He had so much technical stylistic mastery of the craft of writing science fiction that he could do something like this [per Walton, he tells the story "backwards and in high heels"] and get away with it." "It’s astonishing that [Starship Troopers is] still controversial now, fifty years after it was first published," and "Probably [Heinlein would] have been delighted at how much the book has made people think and argue."[34]

To Heinlein's surprise,[35]Starship Troopers won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.[7] By 1980, twenty years after its release, it had been translated into eleven languages and was still selling strongly. However, Heinlein complained that, despite this success, almost all the mail he received about it was negative and he only heard about it "when someone wants to chew me out."[36]

A common complaint about Starship Troopers is that it glorifies war along with the military. There was a two-year debate in the Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies (PITFCS) that was sparked by a comparison between a quote in Starship Troopers that "the noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and war's desolation"[37] (paraphrase of the fourth stanza of "The Star-Spangled Banner") and the anti-war poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen.[32]Dean McLaughlin called it "a book-length recruiting poster."[32]Alexei Panshin, a veteran of the peacetime military, argued that Heinlein glossed over the reality of military life, and that the Terran Federation-Arachnid conflict existed simply because, "Starship troopers are not half so glorious sitting on their butts polishing their weapons for the tenth time for lack of anything else to do."[19]Joe Haldeman, a Vietnam veteran and author of the anti-war Hugo[38]- and Nebula[39]-winning science fiction novel The Forever War, said that he "disagreed" with Starship Troopers because it "glorifies war", but added that "it's a very well-crafted novel, and I believe Heinlein was honest with it".[40]

Defending Heinlein, George Price argued that "[Heinlein] implies, first, that war is something 'endured,' not enjoyed, and second, that war is so unpleasant, so desolate, that it must at all costs be kept away from one's home."[32] In a commentary on his essay "Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?", Heinlein agreed that Starship Troopers "glorifies the military ... Specifically the P.B.I., the Poor Bloody Infantry, the mudfoot who places his frail body between his loved home and the war's desolation – but is rarely appreciated... he has the toughest job of all and should be honored."[41] The book's dedication also reads in part "... to all sergeants everywhere who have labored to make men out of boys."[42] Heinlein also received some complaints about the lack of conscription in Starship Troopers (the military draft was the law in the United States when he wrote the novel).[43]

Some critics assert that the Terran Federation is a fascist society, and that Starship Troopers is therefore an endorsement of fascism. These allegations have become so popular that Sircar's Corollary of Godwin's Law states that once Heinlein is brought up during online debates, "Nazis or Hitler are mentioned within three days."[44] The most visible proponent of these views is probably Paul Verhoeven, whose film version of Starship Troopers portrayed the Terran Federation's personnel wearing uniforms strongly reminiscent of those worn by the SS.[45] Most of the arguments for this view cite the idea that only veterans can vote and non-veterans lack full citizenship; moreover, only veterans are permitted to teach the course "History & Moral Philosophy", children are taught that moral arguments for the status quo are mathematically correct, and both capital and corporal punishment are accepted as methods of teaching morality and reducing crime. The protagonists laud the utility of corporal punishment as a means of correcting juvenile delinquents.[4][5][6][46] Federal Service is not necessarily military, although it is suggested that hardship and strict discipline are pervasive. According to Poul Anderson, Heinlein got the idea not from Nazi Germany or Sparta, but from Switzerland.[16]

Many argue that Heinlein was simply discussing the merits of a "selective versus nonselective franchise."[32][volume & issue needed] Heinlein made a similar claim, over two decades after Starship Troopers's publication, in his Expanded Universe and further claimed that 95% of "veterans" were not military personnel but members of the civil service and that only retired veterans could vote or hold office.[47]

However, this issue is still controversial, even among the book's defenders. James Gifford[10] and David Dyer-Bennet[48] point to several quotes as indications that the characters assume Federal Service is military; for instance, when Rico tells his father he is interested in Federal Service, his father immediately explains his belief that Federal Service is a bad idea because there is no war in progress, indicating that he sees Federal Service as military in nature, or not necessary to a businessman during peacetime. Some Federal Service recruiters wear military ribbons, and a term of service "is either real military service... or a most unreasonable facsimile thereof." Moreover, the history of Federal Service describes it as being started by military veterans who did not originally allow civilians to join and are not described as allowing them to join later. Gifford decides, as a result, that although Heinlein's intentions may have been that Federal Service be 95% non-military, in relation to the actual contents of the book, Heinlein "is wrong on this point. Flatly so."

More recently, the book has been analyzed as a hypothetical utopia, in the sense that while Heinlein's ideas sound plausible, they have never been put to the test. This criticism has been leveled by writers such as Robert A. W. Lowndes, Philip José Farmer, and Michael Moorcock. The latter wrote an essay entitled "Starship Stormtroopers" in which he attacked Heinlein and other writers over similar "Utopian fiction."[49] Lowndes accused Heinlein of using straw man arguments, "countering ingenuous half-truths with brilliant half-truths."[32] Lowndes further argued that the Terran Federation could never be as idealistic as Heinlein portrays it to be because he never properly addressed "whether or not [non-citizens] have at least as full a measure of civil redress against official injustice as we have today".[32] Farmer also agreed, arguing that a "world ruled by veterans would be as mismanaged, graft-ridden, and insane as one ruled by men who had never gotten near the odor of blood and guts."[32]

The supposedly racist aspects of Starship Troopers involve the Terrans' relations with the Bugs and the Skinnies. Richard Geib has suggested that Heinlein portrayed the individual Arachnids as lacking "minds or souls... killing them seems no different from stepping on ants."[50] Both Robert Peterson and John Brunner believe that the nicknames "Bugs" and "Skinnies" carry racial overtones, Brunner making a comparison with calling Koreans "gooks"[32] while Peterson suggested that "not only does the nickname 'Bugs' for the arachnids of Klendathu sound too much like a racial slur, but Heinlein's characters unswervingly believe that humans are superior to Bugs, and that humans are destined to spread across the galaxy."[51]

Robert A. W. Lowndes argues that the war between the Terrans and the Arachnids is not about a quest for racial purity, but rather an extension of Heinlein's belief that man is a wild animal. According to this theory, if man lacks a moral compass beyond the will to survive, and he was confronted by another species with a similar lack of morality, then the only possible moral result would be warfare.[32]

The name was first licensed for an unrelated, B movie script called Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine, which was then retitled "Starship Troopers" to utilize the book's credibility.[58] The resulting 1997 film, written by Ed Neumeier and directed by Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop, Total Recall), had little relationship to the book beyond names and superficial plot details, and received mixed reviews from critics.[59] Admirers of Heinlein were critical of the movie, which they considered a betrayal of Heinlein's philosophy, presenting the society in which the story takes place as fascist.[60] Christopher Weuve, an admirer of Heinlein, has said that the society depicted in the film showed only a superficial resemblance to the society that Heinlein describes in his book. Weuve summed up his critique of the film as follows. First, "while the Terran Federation in Starship Troopers is specifically stated to be a representative democracy, Ed Neumeier decided to make the government into a fascist state ... Second, the book was multiracial, but not so the movie: all the non-Anglo characters from the book have been replaced by characters who look like they stepped out of the Aryan edition of GQ... Third, there is real element of sadism present in the movie which simply isn't present in the book."[61]

Likewise, the powered armor technology that is not only central to the book, but became a standard subgenre of science fiction thereafter, is completely absent in the movie, where the characters use World War II-technology weapons and wearing light combat gear little more advanced than that.[62] According to Verhoeven, this, and the fascist tone of the book, reflected his own experience in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during WWII.[63]

In the DVD commentary, Verhoeven noted that the divergence was intentional as he disagreed deeply with what he saw as the political tilt of the original novel. In fact, Verhoeven had not even read the book, attempting to after he bought the rights to add to his existing movie, and disliking it: "I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring...It is really quite a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn't read the thing".[64]

Starship Troopers influenced many later science fiction stories, setting a tone for the military in space, a type of story referred to as military science fiction. John Steakley's novel Armor was, according to the author, born out of frustration with the small amount of actual combat in Starship Troopers and because he wanted this aspect developed further.[68] Conversely, Joe Haldeman's anti-war novel The Forever War is popularly thought to be a direct reply to Starship Troopers, and though Haldeman has stated that it is actually a result of his personal experiences in the Vietnam War, he has admitted to being influenced by Starship Troopers.[40] Haldeman's historical novel 1968 has a soldier going crazy in Vietnam: he imagines himself killing alien bugs in a battlesuit, instead of actual Vietnamese people.[34]

The 1986 James Cameron film Aliens incorporated themes and phrases from the novel, such as the terms "the drop" and "bug hunt", as well as the cargo-loader exoskeleton. The actors playing the Colonial Marines were also required to read Starship Troopers as part of their preparation prior to filming.[71]

Yoshiyuki Tomino, the creator of the mecha anime TV series Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) has cited Starship Troopers as an important inspiration. He coined the term "mobile suit" used to name the piloted mecha from the anime series as a reference to the novel's own "mobile infantry". The Gundam meta-series is notable for jump-starting the Real Robot genre of mecha anime portrayed in Japanese sci-fi productions, and mostly replacing the fantastical and then-dominant Super Robot genre.[72][73]

^James, Edward & Farah Mendlesohn. The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp 231
"[Heinlein's] works include some that are sensitive to the realities of politics, and some that decidedly are not, but which do embody the imaginative exposition of a political philosophy. The best example of the former is Double Star; of the latter, Starship Troopers."

^Fango Flashback: “STARSHIP TROOPERS” (1997)
Verhoeven went returned to genre territory, optioning a script from his ROBOCOP collaborator Ed Neumeier entitled BUG HUNT AT OUTPOST 9 and refashioning it with elements from Robert Heinlein’s STARSHIP TROOPERS. A loose adaptation at best, Verhoeven saw the potential in another science-fiction satire and pursued it head-on

^How Did Verhoeven Manage to Ruin Starship Troopers So Completely? In the book, Robert Heinlein invented the modern, "Mech Warrior / Battletech" armor (though it's grown a lot since). This idea is now one of the most popular game/toy/merchandising techniques around. It was essential to the book, which was about the life of a hero in the MECHANIZED infantry. A very big deal is made of this, and it's essential to much of the plot and all of the action.
In Verhoeven's movie of the same name, there is no battle armor. This is not because of budgetary constraints, as one can see from the ridiculously complex and expensive "bug" scenes...adding simple mechanized armor would have been little extra expense, especially considering that it may have made some scenes cheaper (no need to integrate real people with the bugs, less expensive scenery), and that the armor was more important to the story than the bugs

^Paul Verhoeven: The "Starship Troopers" Hollywood Flashback Interview
It was an attempt to upgrade the old style Fox Movietone newsreels...and Third Reich propaganda films and even my old Marines documentaries that I did, because a lot of that was promotion and propaganda as well...That's why the relationship to the second world war is so important to me because it was probably the last war, and one of the few wars in history, where you can make the argument that it was good

^Empire
"I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring," says Verhoeven of his attempts to read Heinlein's opus. "It is really quite a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn't read the thing. It's a very right-wing book. And with the movie we tried, and I think at least partially succeeded, in commenting on that at the same time. It would be eat your cake and have it. All the way through we were fighting with the fascism, the ultra-militarism. All the way through I wanted the audience to be asking, 'Are these people crazy?'"